M51 - NGC 5194 - The Whirl Pool Galaxy
Shot on Sunday night, 3/14/21 - Pi Day
The Whirl Pool galaxy is located in the night sky in the area of the sky near the Big Dipper. This image was made with the #westportastronomcialsociety 14” EdgeHD telescope. The detail here is pretty amazing. The focal length is 2737 mm. But with the 2x crop factor of the micro 4/3 sensor on the Olympus EM1x the apparent FL is 5464mm.
From Wikipedia:
What later became known as the Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered on October 13, 1773, by Charles Messier while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51.[12] Its companion galaxy, NGC 5195, was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Méchain, although it was not known whether it was interacting or merely another galaxy passing at a distance. In 1845, William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, employing a 72-inch (1.8 m) reflecting telescope at Birr Castle, Ireland, found that the Whirlpool possessed a spiral structure, the first "nebula" to be known to have one.[13] These "spiral nebulae" were not recognized as galaxies until Edwin Hubble was able to observe Cepheid variables in some of these spiral nebulae, which provided evidence that they were so far away that they must be entirely separate galaxies even though they are seen close together.[14]
The advent of radio astronomy and subsequent radio images of M51 unequivocally demonstrated that the Whirlpool and its companion galaxy are indeed interacting. Sometimes the designation M51 is used to refer to the pair of galaxies, in which case the individual galaxies may be referred to as M51a (NGC 5194) and M51b (NGC 5195).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_GalaxyLights: 58 @ 120s, ISO 1600
Flats: 40
Darks: 40
Bias: 135
Camera: Olympus OM-D EM1x
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 14”
Focal Reducer:0.7
Total Focal Length: 2737mm
Filter: Optolong L-Pro
Software: PixInsight, Photoshop
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